… 4×100m relay teams advance to finals
Rose Amoanimaa Yeboah has retained her high jump gold medal after winning the 2024 Confederation of African Athletics (CAA) championship ongoing at Douala in Cameroon.
Though falling short of the personal best record that won her gold at the African Games held in Accra earlier this year, the golden girl’s clearance of 1.87m was good enough to retain her championship status.
Guinea’s Fatoumatou Balley came second and won silver, a repetition of what happened at the University of Ghana stadium in Accra at the just-ended African Games 2023. Nigeria’s Adenisa Temitope won bronze, a position previously held by Algeria’s Darina Hadil Rezik at the African Games in Accra.
The United States of America (USA) based Ghanaian international athlete also won gold at the 2022 AAC in Mauritius.
Amoanimaa has a record jump of 1.97m, which has earned her a ticket to the 2024 Olympics. She first gained international experience in 2019 at the XIV African U20 Championships in Abidjan, where she won a gold medal in the high jump with a height of 1.83m.
Her growth trajectory is highly commendable, breaking into the national scene as a student of University of Cape Coas, after performing incredibly at the junior and senior high school levels.
Last year, Yeboah confirmed her place among the pantheon of world female high jumpers as she set a new national record by producing a leap of 1.94 metres to grab Ghana’s first gold medal at the FISU World University Games 2023 in Chengdu, China.
That record broke the previous national record of 1.92m set by Abigail Kwarteng at the War Eagle Invitational in Auburn, Alabama, 2022.
By her feat, she has become the second woman in Ghana Athletics to win back-to-back gold medals in the field at continental level in recent times. The first was hepthathlon quee, Margaret Simpson, who dominated her event for more than a decade.
Ghana’s 4×100m relay teams advance to finals
Ghana’s 4×100m men’s relay team has also qualified for the ongoing CAA Seniors Championships final after finishing first in heat-three.
The quartet of Ibrahim Fuseini, Isaac Botsio, Edwin Gadayi and Abdul Rasheed clocked a time of 39.15 seconds, edging out Nigeria.
Starting from lane three, Ibrahim Fuseini led off for Ghana followed by Botsio on the back straight, with Gadayi and Rasheed handling the third and anchor legs respectively. The team is set to compete in the final from lane five, facing Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Botswana, South Africa, Kenya and Namibia.
In the women’s 4×100m relay, the team of Hor Halutie, Anita Afrifa, Deborah Acheampong and Mary Boakye finished second behind Liberia in their heat with a time of 43.89 seconds.
This performance secured their spot in the final, where they will race from lane three against teams from Kenya, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Liberia, Nigeria, Congo and Namibia.
